Firefox 142 has been released. Updates are also available for previous long-term supported branches: 140.2.0, 115.27.0, and 128.14.0. The Firefox 143 branch has entered the beta testing phase, with a scheduled release on September 16.
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What's new in Firefox 142
New tab page
The new tab page now groups recommended articles into thematic sections such as sports, food, and entertainment. Each section includes a "Follow" button to subscribe or block content. This grouping is currently enabled only for users in the United States and will be rolled out to other regions later.
Users can enable it manually by setting to true the following options, browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.discoverystream.sections.enabled and browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.discoverystream.sections.personalization.enabled on the about:config page.
Experimental link preview feature
An experimental link preview feature allows users to view content before clicking. The preview appears when using the context menu, holding Shift while hovering over a link, or pressing and holding the mouse button for more than one second. The preview displays a summary of the page and optionally highlights key points using an AI engine. The AI runs locally on the user's device and is optional. The feature is enabled by default only for users with en-US, en-CA, en-GB, and en-AU locales on systems with more than 3 GB of RAM. It will gradually expand to more users.
Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP)
In Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) mode set to Strict, users can now use an exclusion list to resolve site issues caused by blocking tracking code. Two levels are available: one for significant disruptions and another for minor issues.
Tab Groups
The active tab in a collapsed tab group is now visible, allowing work on a single tab without expanding the entire group. Previously, only the group shortcut was visible when collapsed.
Other changes
- A "Remove" button appears when right-clicking an add-on icon in the sidebar, enabling direct removal.
- On Windows, clicking a remaining notification after Firefox restarts opens the browser to the specified page instead of the site’s home page.
- Drag-and-drop movement of embedded (blob) images has improved. Search results in navigation history via the address bar now filter out duplicates.
- The Android version features a redesigned menu that improves navigation speed and usability.
For developers
- In Developer Tools, the network monitoring page now shows parameters, cookies, and request headers while a request is still in progress.
- A new setting in the JavaScript debugger controls whether the debugger window appears when script execution pauses.
- Add-ons can now use the wllama API, a WebAssembly wrapper around llama.cpp, to run local large language models in the browser.
- The Prioritized Task Scheduling API enables scheduling JavaScript callbacks with different priority levels: blocking user work, creating visible changes, or running in the background.
- The Selection.getComposedRanges() method returns selected text areas.
- The URLPattern API checks if a URL matches a given pattern. It can be used to parse links or redirect requests in Service Worker.
const p = new URLPattern({ protocol: 'https', hostname: 'example.com', pathname: '/:folder/*/:fileName.jpg' }); - The Animation.overallProgress property tracks the estimated progress of animation display.
Bug Fixes and Security
Firefox 142 resolves 17 vulnerabilities. Twelve of these stem from memory issues, including buffer overflows and access to freed memory. These could allow malicious code execution when loading specially crafted pages.
Download Firefox 142
To update to the latest version of Firefox on Windows, head to the browser’s menu and click on ‘About Firefox.’
If you prefer, you can also grab the installer directly from the following link: https://releases.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/142.0/. From there, select the version that matches your operating system, language, and platform. The files are organized into subdirectories based on platform and interface language, and they include full offline installer packages for convenience.
For Linux users, the easiest way to get the latest version is by using your distribution’s package manager. For instance, if you’re on Ubuntu or Mint and have the official mozillateam PPA enabled, you can update Firefox by running the following command in a root terminal:
apt update && apt install firefox.
You can find the official release notes for this version here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/142.0/releasenotes/.
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